the Rock Report

Ohhhhhhh, brother … now someone’s done gone an’ made th’ Relic mad ….

Y’see, I got some RelicMail (soon to be printed out, shredded and used as cat litter) that not only said the Beatles were frauds, but was heavily-punctuated by somethin’ that began with an “f”.
Poor guy … hope he’s now sober enough to read the answer here:

First, lemme tell ya what he wrote, without the “extra adjectives”: The Beatles were nothin’ but … frauds! They took … kids’ money and made … millions, and what the … did they give back but some … half-&@*# songs that anybody could rite!” (The dots are where he included his signature adjective; the “&@*#” was where I deleted a different one!)

Well, lemme “rite” (heh-heh!) an answer here, boy: If it weren’t for John, Paul, George and Ringo, the progression of rock-n-roll would probably been at least a decade later! We’d've been drownin’ in syrupy “pop” until, by way of a cult following, one of the other bands would’ve filtered through. Still, it wouldn’t have been enough to “turn the national tide” toward guitar-based rock!

We’d still have been reelin’ hard over Kennedy’s death, any rock-n-roll that we woulda had would still be regionally-flavored (eg, Beach Boys, Rockabilly, NY/Spector “Walls of Sound”), and if there was any flak over the burgeoning Vietnam War, it woulda most likely turned to violent protests!

We wouldn’t have had the nerve to experiment with sounds like The Fab Four did. Even our humor wouldn’t have been more than “stand-up” shtick — we’d be too afraid to improvise like John and Paul (and Paul’ bro, Mike McGear, of Scaffold fame).

One more thing: Remember The Monkees? Yeah … the “pre-fab Four” who started out a bit fraudulent until Nesmith put his foot down and forced Kirschner to let the band record its own music!
They introed the first Moog Synthesizer to rock (if ya listen to any synth-songs at all, you can thank them!), financed Three Dog Night, was the first to crossover and use a banjo in a rock song, introduced Jimi Hendrix to the rock audience, influenced Mike to create what was to be known as MTV, etc., etc., etc.

Well, bunky, if it weren’t for The Beatles, there’d've been none of that happening!!

Bottom line: From Aerosmith to ZZ Top, Slipknot to Untied, Queen to Queensryche, KISS to Godsmack, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the most imaginative, tightest, most musical and inspiring four men to ever set foot on a rock-and-roll stage:

And that’s it for this edition. Until next time, remember: If you wanna write The Relic, you can do it here … but make it clean and to-the-point (and add money if ya got it! ) … and ya just might see it here on this site!
Now … until next time, remember:

Keep yer eyes on the skies, yer feet on the ground, yer heart with the music …

and I’ll see ya on the flip side!

NEXT UP — A REPRINT BY YOUR REQUESTS: THE FORE INTERVIEW!!

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